Tech Talk- The Impacts Of Mis- And Disinformation W DeVan Hankerson - Madrigal & Maria Rodriguez
We have another exciting show for you this week! <br><br>In February, CDT released a report identifying research gaps in our understanding of the link between race and gender in disinformation campaigns. The report, Facts and their Discontents: A Research Agenda for Disinformation, Race, and Gender, identifies key research questions about how race and gender are used in disinformation efforts. The report also makes recommendations for how to tackle the related systematic and technical problems that researchers and others face in addressing these topics.<br><br>More on our host, Jamal https://bit.ly/cdtjamal<br><br><br>Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
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Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye. CT.
Welcome to CDT's Tech Talk, where we dish on tech and Internet policy while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. I'm Jamal Magby, and it's time to talk tech. In February, CDT released a report identifying research gaps in our understanding of the link between race and gender in disinformation campaigns. The report, Facts and their Discontents, A Research Agenda for Disinformation, Race and Gender, identifies key research questions about how race and gender are used in disinformation efforts. The report also makes recommendations for how to tackle related systematic and technical problems that researchers and others face in addressing these topics. Here to discuss some of the impacts of mis and disinformation on communities of color and across gender identity and discuss their research findings are Maria Rodriguez, assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo and CDT fellow, and Devin Hankerson Madrigal, research manager for CDT. Maria and Devin, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you for having us. Having us.
Of course. So let's jump right into it. For our listeners who may be unfamiliar, can you explain exactly what mis and disinformation is, Maria?
Sure. So in as plain words as I can sort of put together, this disinformation can be understood as sort of targeted false information. So it's deliberately developed and, you know, deployed to confuse folks, to misdirect folks, and typically to divide folks. So an example would be, like, you know, somebody making you believe that your doctor's appointment is at 10AM when it's really at three. And then misinformation is sort of a little bit more fuzzy, but we can think about it as information that contradicts the best expert advice or evidence that's available at a a specific moment in time. And to me, it's a little bit more dangerous and much more widespread because it's about topics that are more dynamic.
So when thinking about mis- and disinformation, I'm I'm curious how different demographics are targeted by these, you know? And what are the harms? How how can this be harmful when talking about different demographics being targeted by by mis- and disinformation?
Yeah, that's a great question. So, and it's kind of a complex answer, but the one thing I'll say, is that there's actually a really long history of actors, both internal to The United States and external to The United States, targeting marginalized communities. And when I say marginalized communities, I mean anyone who isn't a white male who's middle class and Christian, and able-bodied.
And able-bodied. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off there, but, I just wanted to add to that and just, to what Maria was saying about the disproportionate targeting of people, of color online and to your question about the harms. I think just from, a broader perspective, we can see that the main harm is that disinformation and misinformation sort of undermine these larger goals of societal of of societal inclusion and and inclusive democracy, because they mainly focus on either intimidation or voter suppression, confusion and chaos, and that targeted focus on people of color or marginalized people, I think, further exacerbates what we've seen as sort of a pretty, specific history in United States of institutional practices and legislation that have limited the opportunities for democratic for the democratic participation of people of color. So it basically, gloms on to that and sort of makes it even even worse. And we know that, like, even where disinformation operations are not exclusively targeting people of color, the harms in these communities specifically are more aggregate aggravated because of these embedded political disadvantages that we've seen that are mainly wrought by social and political practice.
Yeah. I don't, absolutely. I mean, I think the you know, we we have concrete evidence of, for example, Russian targeting of, black Americans very specifically dating back to, you know, the 1930s. And, and even, more recently with the past two presidential election cycles, we can we have clear, concrete evidence that the cleavages of society, right, the sort of tension points, the biggest one, arguably, is, you know, racial and ethnic relationships within The United States. And it is a very ripe place for internal and external actors to exacerbate because it is so embedded within our democratic institutions, within our democracy itself. The way we've defined democracy, has been exclusionary as a matter of course. And so, it is a it is an incredibly easy thing to do, to engage in. Definitely low hanging fruit. I will agree with you there.
So one term I've been hearing is a mis- and disinformation campaign. Can Maria, can you explain what what this is and and and what it hopes to accomplish?
Absolutely. So, whether we're talking about, information that is specifically produced and deployed, to confuse, as in the case of disinformation, or whether we're talking about information that's sort of nebulous, that's kind of, comprised of both truthful and untruthful parts, as in the case of misinformation, the aim is always to confuse and divide. The aim is always to incite a belief that there is an enemy who you cannot see and that enemy wants to harm you and people who look like you. And so it's best for you to arm yourself, or in some way protect yourself against these folks. So the important thing about this is that we understand mis- and disinformation as happening across populations. So even mainstream populations, arguably, have also large targets. And so what happens in a campaign is that whoever the actor is will take in a disinformation campaign, they will produce false information. For example, like, there's a cabal of politicians that are interested in, you know, child exploitation, which is a campaign that we all maybe have recently heard about, and then spread it through specific channels using visuals, audio, and rhetoric that is familiar to the networks that they're trying to infiltrate. In the case of misinformation, the difference is that a misinformation campaign will contain kernels of truth. For example, strategies to prevent COVID-nineteen, are places where there's a lot of misinformation because it'll include accurate things like wash your hands, wear a mask with, but don't get any vaccinations
because they're clearly implanted with chips that are meant to turn you into a robot soon. That's one right there. I I I did actually see that one making the rounds, and I I, I I almost couldn't I almost couldn't believe it, but then I had to believe it because obviously people are regurgitating those ideas, particularly people, you know, in peep in communities of color who sort of have reason to, suspect that there are some nefarious intent. When I say reason to suspect, I don't mean, in the in the sort of concrete sense, but sort of in a historical sense, there is this basis for distrust and mistrust that, the misinformation is sort of, is built upon. And so it's not a stretch for people who, who, you know, remember Tuskegee or, for example, the Mississippi appendectomies where, women were forcibly sterilized, by, medical students, particularly women of color. So there isn't really a long line to draw between this sort of abuse of these historical abuses of power and and people, particularly people of color, really thinking that it those kinds of things could be possible. And so I think we wanna make sure that we're being sensitive to that at the same time that we call out that the misinformation is essentially taking advantage of these sort of abuses of power and misleading people who are who who have reason to be suspicious. And we know that, like, in the case of, you know, in Latin American communities, we know that some of the misinformation also played on, you know, similarly played on fears around, people's history history with communism in Venezuela or or played on these ideas of, the presidential candidates being somehow socialist. Really, the idea is to, play on a legitimate fear, a genuine fear, and then mix it with real information. And then that sort of is the vehicle through which this misinformation gets spread and communities are, sort of primed to believe it again because of their history. With misinformation
having some kernels of truth, does that make it any more dangerous than disinformation, or are they about on the same lines?
Yeah. I I would say it's incredibly, it's exponentially more dangerous, because, there is there's a part of it that's believable. In fact, it's, part of Operation Infection, which was the 1980s, Russian disinformation campaign. It's part of their it was part of the Russian campaign in the twenty sixteen presidential election, certainly again in the twenty twenty election. I think it's called Countermeasures was the name of the campaign. But, but it is that much more believable because there is a portion of it that is true and that we can verify. And particularly in the case of marginalized populations, you know, populations that are systematically oppressed, repressed, populations that experience violence that itself is not, is not under, not just understood, but also, universally agreed to as, the violence that they experience is not universally agreed to as a negative thing. There is there is such a high capacity for people to weaponize that, both as, sort of receivers of that misinformation and, folks who are developing it. And we see that again across the political spectrum. We see that on the far right all the way through to, the, you know, sort of the left, is people being weaponized as a result of believing misinformation campaigns because they are believable.
Wow. That's a little scary, I must say.
Yeah. It's real funny.
So what are some of the tactics producers of disinformation use to create this content? And and how successful are these campaigns?
Yeah. So, in in, one study I did recently, we we saw, for example, the use of breaking news. Particularly given the twenty four hour news cycle, we have, way more information about the things that are wrong in the world than we ever wanted. And so, you know, using breaking news headlines, using the production, the production value that we see on twenty four hour news networks. For example, on the far right, we see that and even the sort of moderate right, we see that a lot of, citizens get their news from YouTube. Mhmm. Not because they're looking at channels like CNN or MSNBC or Fox or whatever, but because they're looking at these third party media companies who've developed, pretty sophisticated, you know, news sets, graphics, you know, the whole kinda kit and caboodle, and are able to deliver news in on such a par with more traditional media outlets and are but are don't adhere to any of the same conventions, don't, you know, adhere to any of the same rules around journalistic integrity and so on. And so, you know, so we see a lot of that happening, in real time. And we also see other mediums besides social media. You know, we spend a lot of time thinking about mis- and disinformation on social media, but actually it pervades radio. It pervades TV in what we've seen in sort of the conglomeration of local news, television stations being purchased. You know, they're basically monopolies now, which, you know, not a lot of people wanna talk about. So it's not just a it's not a technology problem by itself. It's actually much more pervasive across all media. And books, books I mean, like, self publishing is now a thing, and the amount of books that I've seen on, like, so called conspiracy theories being sold on Amazon, and touted as truth is, you know, is is really it makes me believe that I could write a book if I really put my mind to it. So
yeah. Well, actually actually, piggybacking on that, you just coauthored a paper entitled Disinformation Creep, Eidos, and the Strategic Weaponization of Breaking News. Can you give our listeners a little insight into what you explored in this paper?
Absolutely. So, this was a paper that we wrote kind of in real time as the twenty twenty presidential election was going on. And, what we looked at was a networked group called ADOS. They're known as the American Descendants of Slavery. They kind of go for different monikers now, like the American Descendants of Shadow Slavery. But nonetheless, it's a group whose main aim is purportedly the, acquisition of reparations that are owed to African Americans. And we looked at them because some of their rhetoric, or some of the rhetoric of their leadership, I should say, we noticed was decidedly anti immigrant. And their language parroted a lot of what we saw on the far right, actually, on different platforms. And so we looked at their problem framing and rhetoric in a specific U. S. City and found during the study period that they used Black identity and breaking news to explicitly and implicitly support anti Black groups and causes. And it ends very, very specifically encouraged Black voters to not participate in the twenty twenty presidential election and were active in sort of peddling some of that COVID-nineteen misinformation that I was alluding to before. And as a result of that sort of investigation, in tandem, we sort of built a intervention just to counter some of these narratives and coupled with some of the other efforts that were going on across the country, we found it to be largely successful. I just wanted to add on well, first of all,
we actually, read that paper. It was really well done, and, we, I believe, cited to it in the paper that, we published a couple months ago at CDT called, facts and their discontent, a research agenda for disinformation, race, and gender. And in that piece, we also talked about some of the tactics highlighted highlighted by Maria, and, I believe your coauthor also was Mutale Nkonde, yes, who, has been a part of a a a couple of convenings that we've done at CDT on disinformation, race, and gender. And, she has talked about some of these tactics. And in your paper, you talk about some of these tactics. And I think what's important to point out is that, you know, these campaigns, disinformation campaigns are, as we've said, sort of exploiting these existing existing narratives of discrimination. And the reason they're doing it, the tactic is to command attention and engagement. And our paper really was a research agenda. And we wanted to really focus on the fact that disinformation research in general sort of overlooks the different tactics and patterns that exist when targeting is based on race and gender or both. And it kind of fails to understand the potential impacts fully by not examining how a disinformation campaign may use narratives of race, gender, or intersectional forms of discrimination to support its false claims. Maria sort of talked about the weaponization of narratives of racism and and really gender bias. And I think that's sort of a tactic. Sort of we're talking about it, as it relates to people of color, but I think the narrative itself is being weaponized. The racist narrative itself is being weaponized to kind of further the aims of the disinformation campaign.
Oh, well, no. I was just gonna add. The the the other thing that comes out of, to me from from this work is that, the assumption, at least as I as I understand it, not just in the academy but in sort of the political world at large, is that political thinking in marginalized communities in general, and black communities specifically, is monolithic. Right? The idea is that, like, all black people politically agree with each other, that, you know, you could, all of them are Democratic party members, and that all of them, you know, have are basically invested in groupthink. And I think what this the other thing that this paper is maybe a little bit more subtle, this information paper, kind of points to and some of the work that we're doing now that builds off of this work will show is that that is that couldn't be further from the truth, right? That, being Black does not mean that you have, you have strong allegiances to any party. In fact, why would you when that party those parties haven't had strong allegiances to you? It's actually counter, it's counter survival, to throw all your eggs at any one of those baskets. But that affects disinformation and misinformation very specifically because we actually don't have a concrete understanding of political life in marginalized communities because we've assumed so much for so long. And so when we wanna think about the tactics that are being deployed and we wanna build interventions to counter those tactics, we actually can't do that because we haven't spent any time actually understanding, the lived experience of communities of color as it relates to democracy in as far as the development of that public sphere. And I think that, not only is that a gap in research, but it is the reason that misinformation is so dangerous, because we don't have any way of scaling any intervention in in any way, shape, or form, and certainly not in real time.
I would I would definitely, a plus one to everything that Maria just said. And then just in adding to the last point that you were making about, investment by, political institutions in, communities of color, I think we've sort of seen that play out in in the tactics of disinformation campaigns directly. Specifically, I'm thinking of the work of one of our CDT fellows, Safe Savage, who sort of pointed out that that disinvestment has allowed for, disinformation operatives to take advantage of what, you know, has been sort of discussed sort of broadly and widely as data voids, which is that there's an absence of information, political information, neutral political information, particularly in Spanish language, and I'm sure in other languages as well. I'm sure it's not, unique to the Spanish language online community, and that leaves a gap and opening, if you will, for disinformation operatives to seed that that that space with false information because there's no and there's nothing countering it because there isn't, an investment in, providing accurate neutral political information on candidates in that language or targeted towards those communities, specifically. And, just to, emphasize what, Maria was talking about about this, assumption that black communities are monolithic, from a from a political standpoint, that could not be, as she said, further from the truth. And I think that, you know, one of the tactics another one of the tactics in answer to your question, particularly, related to we saw it more in the, twenty sixteen election. And is this use of and I believe you guys talk about it in your paper as well, sort of digital blackface, digital brownface. These are the these are the tactics that are being deployed by disinformation operatives, and it's not just, it had it it basically is a tactic that migrated from that campaign to the the more the current campaign, the the 2020 campaign, not current. Sorry. The one that just passed. So it's where, people represent themselves as African American activists or Latin people part of the Latinx community, and then use that that that false avatar to, spread false information and to basically trick or deceive whatever audience they're speaking with that they are a member of that community. And we've seen at least some, evidence that in the twenty twenty election, there was, an application of that same tactic as I mentioned, in latinx online communities. We haven't talked a lot yet about some of the tactics around, gender disinformation. But I wanted to sort of talk about that a little bit because we know that there is concerted effort to intimidate women online, particularly, women who are in politics, again, with the, goal of, intimidating them out of running or harassing them to the point that they decide to exit the field, and therefore, diminish the number of female political, leaders and candidates. And the the tactic is to promote this narrative that women are not good political leaders. And the aim is to undermine the the leaders themselves, the ones that are sitting, the ones that are potentially running, by spreading false information about their qualifications, their experience, their intelligence, and they, often use sexualized imagery as part of the tactic to sort of spread and amplify, that false information, which as you can probably tell has direct, impacts on our the the the face of political representation. And I'll just stop
there. Yeah. I'll just add that I, I've been working with an organization to think about, where we sort of did a a kind of, case study of some black, black female identified politicians and looked at, kind of the the the online abuse that they endured. And the the report, is almost done. It's not a it's not an academic publication. But, but it's obviously based on academic research. And part of what we found was that the the the abuse is is so pervasive, and so endemic that it it it is, the the best word that I came up with it was just, you know, these these women are are dealing with so much unpaid emotional labor. You know, it makes me think about every time I, that was a really hard report for me personally as a human to write. I identify as Afro Latina. I identify as a female. I'm cisgendered. And it was hard. It was hard for me personally to write because the kind of abuse that they sustained for make you know, for voting one way, or even for existing in the space that they existed in was so violent, so visceral. And, and none of these women gave up, obviously, but the but I think that that is the sort of next wave. And and they were targets of, you know, deep fakes. They were targets of, of, you know, sort of coordinated troll attacks. Your point, Devin, on blackface, digital blackface is, is really well taken. Dean Freelon, out of UNC Chapel Hill has really great work on this. I cite it all the time. He's been working at this intersection for, for a little bit, and, and his work is really fantastic and rigorous. But, yeah, I would say that the the sort of the intersectional space, where race and ethnicity meets gender and, sexuality, is maybe the next kind of frontier in terms of disinformation
and how we understand it. I would agree with that. And, actually, we cite to Dean as well. He attended our, September convening, I I believe. And so we we definitely cited to his work. So thank you for for mentioning that. I only wanna mention one more tactic, Jamal, and I promise I'll, give it back to you to actually run the interview, for the podcast. But, there's one more that I wanted to, flag just because as you mentioned, like, what the next frontier, is in this space from, sort of research standpoint and all from a academic research standpoint and also just from like, these are the things that we're seeing more often. It's how and we talked about how, disinformation campaigns are sort of intertwined with organic online activity and also that peppered in with some misinformation, some some kernel of truth, which has the impact of making the messaging more accessible. And I think what's important about that tactic is that it what it allows for, and that is it allows for people who may just be, you know, scrolling on Twitter or scrolling on Instagram or wherever they happen to be scrolling to unwittingly spread and amplify these messages and potentially strengthen their impact. And that's important because I think particularly in the domestic sphere politically, we sort of see the weaponization of these, like, micro bloggers or these, bloggers who or people who are micro influencers, who are domestic citizens, who are citizens, who, you know, their page becomes, a vector for dis and misinformation, and they may or may not realize that they are helping to amplify messaging that that potentially has, a suppressive impact on engagement even in the community they themselves may be part of. And I think that, your your work, Maria, sort of points to some of these effects. And as you've said also, it kind of it spans the gamut. It's not just in communities of color. We have noted the work of, I think it's University of Texas at Austin. I think that's where they are. But I'm blanking on the name right now where they sort of looked at mommy and travel bloggers, sort of their online presences being sort of becoming these vectors of mis and disinformation for communities that they happen to be part of or embedded in. So it's not just, you know, communities of color to your earlier point about,
how broad and wide the impacts are. So with that being said, where are some of the gaps in the current research around missing disinformation as it relates to the racial and gender dimensions of disinformation narratives? Where should researchers focus their time?
I'll I'll go ahead and start this time. I I just wanted to to highlight that, like, obviously, the conversations around misinformation and disinformation are everywhere now. There was a hearing back on March 25 actually about misinformation and disinformation online and a one previous to that about mis and disinformation on traditional, media platforms. So we've seen it dominating the public policy discussions everywhere for the past couple of years. And so the research about these topics has developed fairly rapidly over the course of that time. However, as we've discussed, that research sort of lacks a focus on the impact of disinformation and misinformation on people of color, women, LGBTQIA plus communities, and other voices that are typically less prominent in mainstream political discourse in The US. And on this question of where researchers should focus their time, there are a couple of things that we've highlighted, in our work that, we we point to. One is understanding the information verification needs of communities. And by that, I mean, we need to better understand the needs of communities where information verification meaning, verifying that something is accurate is more difficult, or where there are data voids. For example, as we discussed earlier, prevalent in non English speaking communities. And this is a nod to the work of, professor Saif Savage at West Virginia, University. Two, we need to better understand how disinformation deploys racism and misogyny, how it leverages these false narratives based on, racism and misogyny, really would help us improve our efforts to counter disinformation. Maria mentioned the intersectional lens, that would help us really, go beyond just fact checking alone when it comes to, solution development strategies to combat disinformation. Three, we need to understand more about how we need to really focus on defining and measuring disinformation. And as of as we sort of said before, the way we get to a better definition and measurement of disinformation is to really focus on, the intersectional ways that disinformation, uses information to target race racial and gender minorities online. That will really help us get at these questions and and the problem of definition, really by allowing us to focus on the impacts and harm with disinformation as we look at those communities in particular. Four, I think there really is a lack of research on the broad impacts of disinformation. We really aren't able to pinpoint or identify specific impacts specifically as it relates to electoral outcomes or on political opinions or on trust in political institutions, for example, nor are we really able to provide evidence on impacts in cases where disinformation is about or targets people by race and gender. We need to, really focus on measuring coordination and shared views between actors as well as being able to capture the fluidity between disinformation and misinformation. Maria was sort of talking about that a little bit earlier. So the question here is how can research better capture and understand this, interaction, particularly if these patterns kind of vary across and within groups based on race and gender and other factors. And also, on this point of measuring the coordination and shared views, the questions here are, how can we better measure coordination, organic or otherwise, and then to determine who may be involved in a disinformation campaign? To what extent is that coordination maintained through shared views of patriarchy and or white supremacy? So those are the kind of areas we think the research really should be focused on.
Yeah. I, plus one to to all of those things. And and I would just add from my perspective as an academic that, I think one thing to underscore, and I guess now I'm speaking specifically to the academic community, is that the one of the principal gaps, derives from the assumption I alluded to earlier around the monolithic nature of political discourse and marginalized communities. So I think one of the key issues is, academics, in general and specifically social sciences, need to be very critical of that very specific stance that bears out in the academic literature. For example, if you were to look for academic articles on Black conservativism, you would be hard pressed to find one. And I think, the work that we did concerning ADOS speaks to the fact that conservativism is, is a very ripe field of exploitation within the Black community as it is within other mainstream, as it is within mainstream communities, excuse me, because of the dearth of, seriousness that we give to those particular political stances. What I mean by that is that part of the issue, one of the critiques from the far right that I happen to agree with is that there is this idea that anyone who's an academic is by, as a matter of course, completely liberal. And that assumption translates to the populations that we study. And so the very first thing that needs to happen in research is a dismantling of that very specific assumption. The second thing I would say is that it is important to understand the justifiable skepticism in communities of color towards, towards truth that derives from anti Black institutions, and understanding that that anti Black stance is understood by other communities that may or may not identify as Black, but do identify as other. And so in insofar as, the anti Black stance of institutions go, communities, marginalized communities, therefore, have justifiable reasons to be skeptical and reticent to accept advice from established experts or institutions and their experts. And therefore, as Devin mentioned, the, how truth is understood in communities of color, generally, but marginalized communities sort of broadly, is an area of research that must be, must be explored moving further. And we need to find ways to incentivize academics to engage in that type of scholarship because, as a matter of course, it becomes ethnographic. Right? And we know that ethnographic research is not particularly valued in the academy. The other thing I would say is that as a matter of logistical, research, we need to understand that mis- and disinformation is not limited to social media. And this is particularly important for non English speaking communities. Right? So radio, especially, and particularly when we're talking about elders in the community who are, who've been shown to be a particularly susceptible population for mis- and disinformation, we need more research that actually understands how disinformation moves beyond platforms, moves across communication mediums. And, the last thing I would say is that there is always resistance. And that comes from my particular stance as a community organizer back in the day. And so, one of the key areas of research that we need to understand is sort of examining whether and how grassroots organizations are responding to disinformation in their own communities, either through social media or other, mediums, give them credit for developing those interventions and then partnering with them to see if they can scale in certain ways. And that's some work that, my lab, the CARAT lab here at the University at Buffalo is actively engaging in, actually over the summer.
Well, I'll say we covered a ton of information today. And I just wanna thank you both, Maria and Devin for come for joining our show and sharing your expertise with our listeners. I hope we really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you all.
Of course. Thank you so much.
And to our listeners, if you wanna learn more about CDT's research team and our fellows program, please visit us at cdt.org, and don't forget to check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn at SymDemTech. Thank you for talking
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